Page 12 of Dirty Big Sins

I had to get Heather the hell out of this house before something bad happened.

Fortunately, the girl who didn’t speak much seemed to have a brain in her head and she steered clear of her new stepfather. Instead sticking to my side as if glued there. That worked for a solid year… until one night when he was drunk.

Fuck.

I slammed the bedroom door closed after pulling my stepsister into her room. He was drunker than I’d seen in a long time and I knew from experience that meant trouble.

I was two days away from my eighteenth birthday and getting out of this hell hole. But if I left, then no one would be able to protect Heather. And fuck if she didn’t need it.

“We have got to find a way to get you out of this house. That fucker out there is a predator and if you aren’t careful, you are going to end up his victim.”

She blinked a few times but kept her mouth closed. However, I didn’t miss the quiver of her bottom lip.

This kid was in serious trouble and I wasn’t sure if she understood how much.

“Look,” I started, taking a deep breath to soothe the frustration I barely kept banked. “I’m leaving at the end of the week, but I’m worried about you. This place isn’t safe. We’ve got to convince your grandmother that you need to live with her permanently.”

As usual, she said nothing. Her doe eyes stared back at me, clearly filled with confusion.

“Don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right. Now what are we going to do about this because I can’t stay here any longer. I’ll kill him if I do.”

I didn’t know what I expected to happen here, but her response floored me.

“No one would miss him if you did.”

Her words came out on a strained whisper, but I’d heard them just fine. I’d known she could talk. There’d been a few times in the past year since she’d moved in that I’d heard them. But they were so sparse, I always forgot what she sounded like in between.

The harsh, almost broken tone of barely used vocal cords scraped at my soul, all but begging me to do something. To help her.

But what she wanted; I couldn’t give. Not yet. I had to be smarter than him. Smarter than everyone. If I ended up in jail, everything I’d worked so hard for would be for nothing.

If I’d learned anything in the last two years since that first time I’d… It was that letting go of control wasn’t an option. Whether I was in a ring or not, it didn’t matter. Maintaining complete control over my mind and body had become key to my success as a fighter and it was the only thing that separated me from the life of crime I’d been headed into.

I choked back a bitter laugh. I wasn’t stupid, nor naive and I certainly wasn’t some sort of choir boy who had a nut for the straight and narrow.

My moral compass didn’t exactly point true north, but it still existed. It just bent the rules to suit the situation. Always had and probably always would. As long as the end result landed on the right side according to me, then it always justified the means.

Beating Henry that night to a bloody pulp had proven that. That bastard didn’t dare lay another finger on me after that. And the proof of what I could do had kept Heather safe as well.

By rights, it should apply whether I lived in this house or not. But I couldn’t take that chance. She wasn’t staying in this house without me, but her mother would never allow me to take her. It had to be the grandmother. It was the only way.

I’d been right about that. And it had only taken a small reminder to Henry to make it happen. Heather and I had moved out on my birthday without looking back. And for several years after that, my life had gone exactly according to plan.

Little did I know then that Heather would get exactly what she wanted from me.

But only after it was too late.

Chapter Six

ZIA

“It’s been almost a week,Zia. Don’t you think it’s past time we got back to work?” Julie frowned up at me from her seat at my dining table. She’d been poised over her tablet for hours now, engrossed in whatever was happening on her screen. Her sudden attention turned my way startled me.

“What are you talking about? We’ve been working our asses off. The design of the restaurant is nearly complete, as is the menu, and everything we’ve ordered is due to begin arriving by tomorrow. We’re pretty damn close to right on schedule.”

My assistant mumbled something I couldn’t hear, but I ignored it. She, along with everyone else, had been on my case about leaving the suite.

“She’s right,” Nina interjected. “You’ve been holed up here more than enough. How long are you going to let this situation paralyze your life?”

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